12 Awesome Pop-Culture Tours

Sometimes, it’s not enough to watch your favorite TV show or listen to a legendary band’s music; you also want to immerse yourself in the experience.

1. Game of Thrones: A Unique Tour of Croatia

The epic HBO series famously films in remote locales around the world, including Northern Ireland, Morocco, and Iceland (standing in for the Wall, where the Night’s Watch spends its frozen days and nights). But if you’d prefer not to succumb to frostbite, take this tour along the Adriatic Coast: GoT obsessives spend four days visiting Croatian filming locations, including Dubrovnik, which hard-core fans will recognize as Seven Kingdoms capital King’s Landing. (But be prepared to call in a Lannister debt if you book the tour: The trip costs $3200.)

2. Hunger Games Unofficial Fan Tours

You probably wouldn’t want to live in Panem, the nation at the center of The Hunger Games, or participate in the titular bloodbath at the series’ center. But on these tours, Katniss superfans come pretty close to seeing the world created in the films. You can choose to visit North Carolina, where DuPont State Recreational Forest was transformed into the Arena in the first film, or Atlanta, Georgia, to see the spots used as President Snow’s mansion and the cornucopia in 2013’s Catching Fire. There are also immersive, weekend-long trips meant to simulate the experience of actually participating in the Games—but maybe save those for the really die-hard fans.

3. BBC’s Sherlock Locations Tour

Travel as Sherlock and Watson do—in one of London’s iconic black taxi cabs—during this three-hour jaunt, which visits some of the sites used on the BBC series. Among the spots fans will see: St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where—spoiler alert!—Sherlock fakes his death in the second series; the exterior of Charles Augustus Magnussen’s office; and, of course, 221B Baker Street. (Tour-goers also get a free cuppa at Speedy’s Cafe, the coffee shop next to the detectives’ office.)

4. The Doctor Who Experience

How do you properly celebrate a show that’s been on the air, in some iteration or another, for five decades? You give it a gigantic space in Cardiff, Wales, and fill it with enough props from the series to satisfy the biggest Whovian. This immersive experience opened in 2012 and includes artifacts from the show’s more than 50 years of existence: Costumes worn by every Doctor, from William Hartnell to Matt Smith, are on view, along with creepy models of some of the Doctor’s biggest foes, such as the Weeping Angels and the Daleks. (And like the Doctor himself, the experience regenerates every so often, with new props added on a rolling basis.)

5. Highclere Castle

Downton Abbey’s upstairs-downstairs drama has its basis in reality: The show is filmed at this 5000-acre estate in Hampshire, England, which serves as the home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon. In fact, the story of Lady Almina, the fifth Countess of the castle, parallels that of Lady Grantham: She married into British aristocracy, and converted the home into a hospital during World War I. So what will Downton addicts see? The exterior is immediately recognizable, but fans can also explore the house itself; the bedrooms and library are among the rooms that were used as locations on the show.

6. The Field of Dreams Site

It’s unlikely that if you visit this site, a mysterious voice will lead you to your destiny, or summon the ghosts of long-gone athletes. But still, fans of the 1989 Kevin Costner weepie can check out the Dyersville, Iowa farmhouse featured in the film, as well as its cornfields and the famed baseball diamond. Visitors can run the bases or take in a game—the Ghost Players will take the field, of course—and since the flick will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2014, expect special events throughout the year.

7. Warner Bros. Studio Tour London

Muggles can immerse themselves in Harry Potter’s world—from Privet Drive to Diagon Alley to the Great Hall at Hogwarts—at this Leavesden studio, which opened to the public in 2012. Each section of the site is stuffed with props from the Harry Potter films, including the Knight’s Bus, a enormous scale model of Hogwarts Castle, and the many treasures in Dumbledore’s office. But it’s also interactive: You can pretend you’re in a Quidditch match by riding a broom in front of a green screen, or find out what Butterbeer actually tastes like once and for all.

8. Sex and the City Sites Tour

This three-and-a-half hour bus tour takes groups of SATC fans to more than 40 spots used on the show. It hits three neighborhoods: Midtown (The New York Public Library, Tiffany & Co.), the Meatpacking District (Buddakan, schmancy boutiques), and Greenwich Village (the Magnolia Bakery, duh). And yes, for those who are curious: the tour claims to be R-rated, so it won’t shy away from the show’s, uh, racier settings.

9. Twin Peaks Fest

Looking for a slice of cherry pie and some damn fine coffee? Head to North Bend, Washington, where an annual celebration of David Lynch’s über-weird early-’90s series has taken place for more than 20 years. One of the centerpieces of the weekend-long event is a three-hour bus tour showcasing filming locations from the series, including the waterfall at Snoqualmie Falls (featured prominently in the opening credits) and the Weyerhaeuser sawmill, which stood in for the Packard Mill on the show. (And if you really want to sample that famous pie, take a detour to Twede’s Diner, also known as the Double R Diner on the show.)

10. Magical Mystery Tour Liverpool

Of all the Beatles tours out there—and trust us, there are plenty—this one has one of the biggest perks for dedicated fans: It’s a two-hour bus ride on a replica of the vehicle used in the band’s 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour. (Nevermind the fact that the film wasn’t exactly a hit when it first premiered.) Along the way, tour-goers visit the church where John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time; spots that provided inspiration for songs like “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”; and the Cavern Club, the Liverpool venue where they built up a pre-Beatlemania following.

11. Lord of the Rings Tours and Experiences

Middle-Earth may not be real, but Queenstown, New Zealand is—and several tours offered by Southern Lakes Sightseeing take fans of Frodo & co. to locations used in Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films. Two of the longer tours take visitors on journeys along the trails traversed by the Fellowship, while a shorter tour focuses exclusively on the weapons and props used in the movies, including Aragorn’s hunting knife and Gimli’s ax. (And yes, you can handle and take photos with the weapons—but carefully.)

12. Kramer's Reality Tour

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Cosmo Kramer launched the J. Peterman Reality Tour? That was a spoof on Kenny Kramer's Reality Tour, an actual bus tour run by the inspiration for Michael Richards' character. The bus visits famous Seinfeld scenes and gives you behind-the-scenes info. You might see, for example, "the place where Kramer and Newman got the black market shower heads." Or learn that "there is an actual Russell Dalrymple, Lloyd Braun, Becky Gelke, John Mollica, Al Niche, and even a person called 'The Drake.'"

Despite Jerry's claim that "nobody wants to go on a three hour bus tour of a totally unknown person's life," the Kramer Reality Tour is still going strong more than 15 years after the show's finale. Book your Spring/Summer 2014 tour now! Think your $37.50 ticket comes with a bite-size 3 Musketeers?

For most people, asking for a job referral can be daunting. What if the person being approached shoots you down? What if you ask the "wrong" way? LinkedIn, which has been aggressively establishing itself as a catch-all hub for employment opportunities, has a solution, as Mashable reports.

The company recently launched "Ask for a Referral," an option that will appear to those browsing job listings. When you click on a job listed by a business that also employs one of your LinkedIn first-degree connections, you'll have the opportunity to solicit a referral from that individual.

The default message that LinkedIn creates is somewhat generic, but it hits the main topics—namely, prompting you to explain how you and your connection know one another and why you'd be a good fit for the position. If you're the one being asked for a referral, the site will direct you to the job posting and offer three prompts for a response, ranging from "Sure…" to "Sorry…".

LinkedIn says the referral option may not be available for all posts or all users, as the feature is still being rolled out. If you do see the option, it will likely pay to take advantage of it: LinkedIn reports that recruiters who receive both a referral and a job application from a prospective hire are four times more likely to contact that individual.

In casual conversation, people often use the word theory to mean "hunch" or "guess": If you see the same man riding the northbound bus every morning, you might theorize that he has a job in the north end of the city; if you forget to put the bread in the breadbox and discover chunks have been taken out of it the next morning, you might theorize that you have mice in your kitchen.

In science, a theory is a stronger assertion. Typically, it's a claim about the relationship between various facts; a way of providing a concise explanation for what's been observed. The American Museum of Natural History puts it this way: "A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts."

For example, Newton's theory of gravity—also known as his law of universal gravitation—says that every object, anywhere in the universe, responds to the force of gravity in the same way. Observational data from the Moon's motion around the Earth, the motion of Jupiter's moons around Jupiter, and the downward fall of a dropped hammer are all consistent with Newton's theory. So Newton's theory provides a concise way of summarizing what we know about the motion of these objects—indeed, of any object responding to the force of gravity.

A scientific theory "organizes experience," James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science at the University of Toronto, tells Mental Floss. "It puts it into some kind of systematic form."

A SUCCESSFUL THEORY EXPLAINS

A theory's ability to account for already known facts lays a solid foundation for its acceptance. Let's take a closer look at Newton's theory of gravity as an example.

In the late 17th century, the planets were known to move in elliptical orbits around the Sun, but no one had a clear idea of why the orbits had to be shaped like ellipses. Similarly, the movement of falling objects had been well understood since the work of Galileo a half-century earlier; the Italian scientist had worked out a mathematical formula that describes how the speed of a falling object increases over time. Newton's great breakthrough was to tie all of this together. According to legend, his moment of insight came as he gazed upon a falling apple in his native Lincolnshire.

In Newton's theory, every object is attracted to every other object with a force that’s proportional to the masses of the objects, but inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This is known as an “inverse square” law. For example, if the distance between the Sun and the Earth were doubled, the gravitational attraction between the Earth and the Sun would be cut to one-quarter of its current strength. Newton, using his theories and a bit of calculus, was able to show that the gravitational force between the Sun and the planets as they move through space meant that orbits had to be elliptical.

Newton's theory is powerful because it explains so much: the falling apple, the motion of the Moon around the Earth, and the motion of all of the planets—and even comets—around the Sun. All of it now made sense.

A SUCCESSFUL THEORY PREDICTS

A theory gains even more support if it predicts new, observable phenomena. The English astronomer Edmond Halley used Newton's theory of gravity to calculate the orbit of the comet that now bears his name. Taking into account the gravitational pull of the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, in 1705, he predicted that the comet, which had last been seen in 1682, would return in 1758. Sure enough, it did, reappearing in December of that year. (Unfortunately, Halley didn't live to see it; he died in 1742.) The predicted return of Halley's Comet, Brown says, was "a spectacular triumph" of Newton's theory.

In the early 20th century, Newton's theory of gravity would itself be superseded—as physicists put it—by Einstein's, known as general relativity. (Where Newton envisioned gravity as a force acting between objects, Einstein described gravity as the result of a curving or warping of space itself.) General relativity was able to explain certain phenomena that Newton's theory couldn't account for, such as an anomaly in the orbit of Mercury, which slowly rotates—the technical term for this is "precession"—so that while each loop the planet takes around the Sun is an ellipse, over the years Mercury traces out a spiral path similar to one you may have made as a kid on a Spirograph.

Significantly, Einstein’s theory also made predictions that differed from Newton's. One was the idea that gravity can bend starlight, which was spectacularly confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919 (and made Einstein an overnight celebrity). Nearly 100 years later, in 2016, the discovery of gravitational waves confirmed yet another prediction. In the century between, at least eight predictions of Einstein's theory have been confirmed.

A THEORY CAN EVOLVE, MERGE, OR BE REPLACED

And yet physicists believe that Einstein's theory will one day give way to a new, more complete theory. It already seems to conflict with quantum mechanics, the theory that provides our best description of the subatomic world. The way the two theories describe the world is very different. General relativity describes the universe as containing particles with definite positions and speeds, moving about in response to gravitational fields that permeate all of space. Quantum mechanics, in contrast, yields only the probability that each particle will be found in some particular location at some particular time.

What would a "unified theory of physics"—one that combines quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity—look like? Presumably it would combine the explanatory power of both theories, allowing scientists to make sense of both the very large and the very small in the universe.

A THEORY CAN ALSO BE A FACT

Let's shift from physics to biology for a moment.It is precisely because of its vast explanatory power that biologists hold Darwin's theory of evolution—which allows scientists to make sense of data from genetics, physiology, biochemistry, paleontology, biogeography, and many other fields—in such high esteem. As the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it in an influential essay in 1973, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Interestingly, the word evolution can be used to refer to both a theory and a fact—something Darwin himself realized. "Darwin, when he was talking about evolution, distinguished between the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution," Brown says. "The fact of evolution was that species had, in fact, evolved [i.e. changed over time]—and he had all sorts of evidence for this. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain this evolutionary process." The explanation that Darwin eventually came up with was the idea of natural selection—roughly, the idea that an organism's offspring will vary, and that those offspring with more favorable traits will be more likely to survive, thus passing those traits on to the next generation.

WE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN THEORIES

Many theories are rock-solid: Scientists have just as much confidence in the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, plate tectonics, and thermodynamics as they do in the statement that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Other theories, closer to the cutting-edge of current research, are more tentative, like string theory (the idea that everything in the universe is made up of tiny, vibrating strings or loops of pure energy) or the various multiverse theories (the idea that our entire universe is just one of many). String theory and multiverse theories remain controversial because of the lack of direct experimental evidence for them, and some critics claim that multiverse theories aren't even testable in principle. They argue that there's no conceivable experiment that one could perform that would reveal the existence of these other universes.

Sometimes more than one theory is put forward to explain observations of natural phenomena; these theories might be said to "compete," with scientists judging which one provides the best explanation for the observations.

"That's how it should ideally work," Brown says. "You put forward your theory, I put forward my theory; we accumulate a lot of evidence. Eventually, one of our theories might prove to obviously be better than the other, over some period of time. At that point, the losing theory sort of falls away. And the winning theory will probably fight battles in the future."